A PRIZE BEAUTY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143782, 4 May 1912, Page 4

A PRIZE BEAUTY.

THE PRETTIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD.

Miss Virginia Lee, of Pittsburg, whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie proclaimed tho most beautiful girl in the world, is contemplating flight in order to escape from a host of admirers who follow her wherever she goes. Miss Lee is a twenty-year-old typist who recently finished her studies at a Pittsburg school, which is one of Mr. Carnegie’s philanthropic enterprises. Her father met Mr. Carnegie at Hot Springs, Arkansas, recently, and showed him her portrait. Mr. Carnegie took the picture and proclaimed throughout Hot Springs that Miss Lee was the prettiest girl he had over found. He gave tho photograph to a reporter for reproduction. Now her picture is appearing in the newspapers everywhere. Every time Miss Leo appears in the streets she is pursued by crowds. They follow her when she goes to work in the morning, escort her to lunch and escort her home again after the day’s work is over. Photographers dog her footsteps, music-hall managers are deluging her with offers to appear on the stage, artists want to paint her portrait. Every post brings numerous proposals of marriage. If she attends the theatre she overshadows the performance. No matter where she goes the crowd cries: “Hero comes Carnegie’s prize beauty 1” Miss Lee was at first amused, but her amusement soon turned to anger, and she now declares that her present life is intolerable. She is a modest, retiring, business-like girl, and she insists that nobody else will endorse Mr. Carnegie’s opinion. Mr. Carnegie, on the other hand, declares that he is willing to leave the matter to anybody’s judgment whether he is not right. “If I wero not happily married,” he said to an interviewer, “I would return to Pittsburg and see this young lady, but I guess some enterprising young Pittsburg man has already seen in Miss Lee what I have seen—that she is a pearl beyond price.”